‘We have a right to a better life’
Salvadorans speak on deportation fears
The Trump administration this week announced it will end Temporary Protective Status — better known as TPS — for immigrants from El Salvador in September 2019.
The designation allows about 200,000 Salvadorans to live and work in the country without fear of deportation. The Central American country was designated for TPS status following a 7.7 earthquake in 2001. But on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security announced the original conditions caused by the earthquake no longer exist and Salvadorans must return or risk deportation.
There are 6,000 Salvadorans living in the Bay State who are affected, about 2,000 of whom live in Boston.
The nonprofit Centro Presente yesterday organized a TPS rally for Salvadorans held at City Hall. Many beneficiaries spoke about dealing with the angst of having their families ripped apart and the prospect of being sent to a country where gang violence is an everyday danger. These are their stories in their own words:
Elsa Pineda, 45, of Chelsea, is a cleaning lady with three children under the age of 19, two of whom were born in Massachusetts. She gained TPS status in 2001 and left her home in Chalatenango in northwest El Salvador. Pineda cried when speaking about possible deportation.
“It’s not humane what they’re doing,” she said in Spanish. “We have a right to a better life. We’re here to work. We have a right for our children to prosper. We have children. We don’t want to be separated from them. We can’t take them back, it’s impossible. They could get killed there.”
Pineda’s 15-year-old son, Charles, who attends Excel Academy Charter High School in East Boston, comforted his mom yesterday. The teen said watching his mom suffer and thinking about the uncertain future has been difficult.
“It hurts a lot to see her like this. She’s already busy enough trying to take care of us. She works from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m . ... It would be horrible to see my mom go. If she goes, she might not come back for a very long time, it could be a year, it could be more.”
Yanira Pacheco of Revere has three children, including her 11-year-old daughter who was born in Massachusetts. Pacheco gained TPS status in 2009. Her husband, a construction worker, also is a TPS designee.
Pacheco, who is a housewife but used to work packaging vegetables in Chelsea, said in Spanish that gangs in El Salvador terrorize ordinary people by pressuring them to join gangs or by stealing money from them.
“What they do is they go to the schools and they harass students. And because they know they have parents, brothers and sisters, they’ll find them and they’ll harass them, too.”
Elmer Vivas Portillo, 19, a sophomore at Harvard, said his mom is a TPS beneficiary. She works as a housekeeper while Vivas’ father works multiple custodial jobs. Vivas said he has five uncles in Greater Boston who also hold TPS status who have at least two U.S.born children each.
“You have to decide to uproot my entire life and go back or am I going to decide and stay and be declared a criminal? ... I have a younger brother who is 9. My mom, she works a fulltime job, but every evening she is the one babysitting him. What’s going to happen then?”
Vivas said of his parents: “They’ve had to fight to be here. They’ve had to fight to get a job. They’ve had to fight to clean other people’s offices, clean other people’s hotel rooms, pick up other people’s trash. But they’ve done it with pride.”